On the 8th of December 2016, an analyst and blogger RoSsi BaRBeRa – one of the few that I read for their honest and direct approach to the world events – publish an article titled “Ukraine and the new bout for for-free [Euronews journalists are striking because of the refusal to count them as Russians]”.
In short, that article was describing an absurd situation after closing of the Ukrainian office of Euronews. Euronews closed down its Ukrainian-language office in France. It was created in 2011, and as with all the Euronews participating countries, Ukraine was to pay a certain license contribution towards running of their department. (Russian VGTRK, btw, owns 7% of shares of Euronews). After the 2014 “revolution” Ukraine decided that Europe owes Ukraine for the defence of the European values, and stopped paying. The Ukrainian department was then financed by Euronews from the common funds, but was not disbanded as Russophobia was in high demand. At the same time Euronews tried to get the money from Ukraine (€10 mill) through Ukrainian court system. To the European amazement, Ukraine did the same number as they did on the Russian Gazprom – the debtor started dictated conditions. Euronews haven’t got a cent. Now, in December 2016 Euronews shut down the Ukrainian department. And here comes the essence of the story:
The journalists from that department attempted first to apply to the Russian-language department (currently the most profitable in the Euronews consortium, with good salaries), but were refused. The reason from the management was this: Ukrainians do not have enough command of the Russian language and culture to work in the Russian department (after all, that’s what the rabid Ukrainian propaganda was all about all this time!). Ukrainian Euronews journalists – who only the day before were “defending Europe against Russian aggression” – suddenly did a U-turn and indignantly stated that they were all born in USSR, are from the same country, and anyway, Russian department employed Armenians and Belorussians, so why are Ukrainians discriminated. When it became clear that Euronews would not budge on the decision, they did another U-turn and started blaming, who else – Putin for not allowing them to work in the Russian department of Euronews… Curtain.
That was a pre-history, now comes the story…